ON THE RECORD.

Name: Roxanne Roberts Job: Associate trauma unit...

November 12, 1995|By Cindy Schreuder, Tribune Staff Writer.

Name: Roxanne Roberts

Job: Associate trauma unit director

To be a trauma surgeon at Cook County Hospital is to live nightmares in the daytime. In an interview, Dr. Roxanne Roberts, 40, explains how life in a trauma center differs from the way it's depicted on television shows such as "ER."

Q: Many people get a perception of what it is like to work in a hospital emergency room or trauma center by watching the hospital-based television shows that are popular now. What's your reaction to these shows?

A: The thing that bothered me most about (the first "ER" episode) was they had junior people doing major procedures on patients. They're talking, essentially, about our hospital and that never happens here. That made me very upset.

But I thought some of it was pretty realistic. Except they have the nurses look like they're handmaidens or something, which are not our nurses. Everybody has a role to play and we all work as equals and colleagues.

Q: There have always been complaints that the media, and television in particular, glamorizes violence. Do you think that that's the case with these hospital shows?

A: People just sort of fall over and they're dead. That doesn't seem very scary really because you don't see the pain and you don't see the suffering.

The most dramatic thing really is not just the patients. We have pain medications. We can put them to sleep so they're not suffering. The families (are something else).

Our patient population is pretty much an inner-city minority population. One thing that they have that's really remarkable is they have incredible families.

When something happens, you don't just have mom and dad show up, which would be something from my culture. You have mom and dad; you have the aunts, the uncles, the grandparents, the sisters, the brothers, the cousins. It's an incredible family who come in and all really love this kid. And just that morning he was putting on his basketball shoes and leaving for school and now he's dead.

A lot of times when you're taking care of these kids you don't really think of them as young people. And then suddenly you go out and you see the family-and it's really hard to do over and over.

Q: What do you think of them when you're treating them?

A: I try not to think of them like they were just at school or they have best friends or any of that.

Q; Why? Is that hard for you?

A: Oh yeah. It's hard for all of us. We try to give ourselves a little distance, go ahead and do the procedures and do what we need to do to try and save the person's life. After it's over, what really brings it back again is you're trying to look through the clothes for an ID tag or the family comes in and that really wakes you up.

Q: Define a bad day.

A: A bad day for me is a baby dying in the burn unit or somebody that I'm operating on that doesn't make it off the table.

Q: Can you do this kind of work without second guessing yourself?

A: No. I don't think a person would be very good if she didn't second-guess herself.

Q; Why not?

A: You've always got to be thinking that there's got to be a better way that you can do something, no matter how many years of experience (you have). We all try to figure out if there's some way we can learn, some way we can do it better the next time. Most of us have been doing this for a long time, and there isn't. Some people are just going to die.

Q: How has working in this kind of environment changed your attitude toward death?

A: It's really scary because it's made me realize that death can come up on you at any time, no matter what age and no matter where you live, no matter who you are. It can just be there one minute.

Q: What is it like being a white physician working primarily with minority patients?

A: I think it would be great if we had more minority staff people here. Many of the nurses and others on staff are minorities and culturally we use them a lot in order to sort of bridge the gap, if you will. Our patients are very accepting of us and I think they can sense our sincerity, that we're really trying to do the best thing for them, though that does sound sort of corny.

People call you names and stuff sometimes when they're very upset, especially when they're very scared. This is some of the young kids, some of the gang kids. I think that's just the way they deal with fear. It doesn't really bother us. We're pretty thick-skinned.

Q: You have been active politically in lobbying Springfield for some gun controls. Activism is something a lot of physicians don't pursue, and yet you seem to think of it as a component of your job. Why?

A: At this point we're real good at taking care of the patients that come in. We're real good at operating on them, not to brag, but we're very good at that. But we see the same people coming in over and over again.